By Melissa Pleckham
The Dark Lull
Nothing’s ever completely dead.
In the 1971 film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death — a film so slow, so subtle that one hesitates to call it a horror film, let alone a vampire film, although that’s exactly what it is — this line is uttered by the pale, red-haired woman whom the titular Jessica is surprised to find squatting in the farmhouse she’s recently acquired with her husband and friend. The trio have just crossed the fog-veiled Connecticut countryside in a black hearse with the word “LOVE” scrawled in crimson on its door; Jessica, fragile as fine china after a mental health episode only vaguely alluded to, demands the hearse stop at a weed-choked cemetery for grave rubbings. She hangs the headstone-sized tissue paper trophies around her bed, runs her fingers across them delicately. This, we are shown, is a woman for whom death is a part of life in a very tangible way.
So when the red-haired woman suggests a seance one night after dinner, and responds to Jessica’s friend’s skepticism with this line that calls into question the very existence of death itself, or at least death as any sort of permanent or all-encompassing state, Jessica seems to smile in agreement, readily playing the part of medium when beseeched. There are no Victorian parlor theatrics in this film, but the scene — and the line — have stayed with me just the same. It’s a film that I like to revisit as the heat and chaos of late summer begin to melt imperceptibly into the dark lull of autumn. But this year, the line resonated with me more than ever. I kept it in my mind, I ran my fingers over it like Jessica with her grave rubbings.
Is it true that death is a myth? A fairy tale? Does anything, anyone, ever die completely?
The last October before the world stopped, I spent Halloween in the labyrinth of bones beneath the city of Paris. It was my first visit to the city, and my first Halloween spent out of the country. My husband and I wanted to do something special, unforgettable.
We walked to the catacombs from our hotel in the 6th arrondissement. It had been raining but that morning was cool and cloudy, the air sweet and sharp. The day before we’d visited Père Lachaise, the trees lining the stone paths of the cemetery crowned with gold and orange. Jim Morrison’s grave was surrounded by a fence, the ground nearby strewn with gifts, offerings. On the way out we passed a mausoleum with its door partially ajar; in the dark, we could see cigarette butts, an empty liquor bottle, and, stretched stark white against the stark white marble, a large bone that looked like a femur. Shocked, we looked away. “Someone’s been partying here,” I said. “Some French kids.”
But who can say who threw that party? Who can say who was invited, who attended? Nothing’s ever completely dead.
At the catacombs that Halloween morning, we could be certain more bones awaited us in that dank darkness beneath the city of light, down that endlessly spiraling staircase, through that electric torch-lit tunnel, on the other side of the archway that demarcates the start of that self-proclaimed Empire of Death. The catacombs sprawl like veins beneath the skin of the city, a second Paris that is far less lively but no less full of lives, or at least the earthly remains of those who once lived them.
I had never been in an ossuary before, and once I adjusted to the darkness, to the feeling of being so far underground, what struck me most was how peaceful it was. How quiet. How the skulls stacked almost to the ceiling felt both very relatable, very human — alas, poor Yorick! — but also so far removed from the one on my own shoulders, atop my own spine, that held the organ that made all of my hopes and dreams and loves and fears and observances and sensory perceptions possible. Every skull in those catacombs had once held a brain like a precious jewel, every bone signified a human soul that had walked the streets above us, the streets where we were so charmed and beguiled by the romance and mystery of Paris.
Are the catacombs scary? Of course not, although I wouldn’t want to be trapped down there alone. So I suppose I might concede that the tunnels, the darkness, have the capacity to frighten. But the bones? Those are beautiful.
Are the catacombs scary? Of course not. Nothing’s ever completely dead.
Autumn’s lull would take on a different meaning for me the following year, and the one after that: The pandemic forced a different kind of pause, a different kind of reflection, a different kind of encounter with death than I’d ever experienced before. I remembered our Halloween in the catacombs often that October, sometimes with sadness as I wondered if I would ever have the opportunity to travel internationally again, but always with gratitude for the experience we’d shared.
This year, at the tail end of a summer that so far refuses to end, refuses to concede its loss to the looming autumn, my heart again wanders back to those cool dark halls coiled beneath Paris. I walk there in my mind like a meditation, relishing the mystery, wondering at my own mortality. No matter how strong we may feel, fall is a time of year where the crunch of a leaf, the singe of burning pumpkin, the thrill or sadness of a sunset that comes sooner than we were expecting, reminds us that to live is to know that our hearts are limned with lines like a cracked teacup, that the veil between worlds is tissue-thin, spread soft against stone, could tear at any time.
And it reminds us: Do not fear.
Do not fear. Nothing is ever completely dead.
Melissa Pleckham is a Los Angeles-based writer, actor, and musician. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including Flame Tree Fiction, Luna Luna, Hello Horror, Under the Bed Magazine, and FunDead Publications’ Entombed in Verse poetry collection. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association. Her short screenplay "Moon-Sick" was awarded Best Werewolf Short Script at the 2020 Hollywood Horrorfest and was a Finalist at the 2021 Shriekfest Horror Film Festival. She also plays bass and sings for the garage-goth duo Black Lullabies. You can find her online at melissapleckham.com and on social media at @mpleckham.